jat56,
Fishing from a small 17' CC, I had 60 pots for 6 years off of Wading River fishing from June through Sept. A pound a pot was what most of us aimed for and was satisfied with on most days (keep in mind that this does goes back to around 1987 - 88). Whenever I experimented with the shallower and easier waters of say 20 - 40 ft., it was tough pickins, and that's putting it mildly. Most times I was inundated with tons and tons of crabs - the unedible kind - or the pot would be completely barren. This was only off of W.R. mind you. As someone mentioned in a previous posting, every area is different. Any way, after a while, it did not take rocket science intuition to figure that the deeper waters (75 - 120ft.) were the places to be. Besides the weekend warrior poachers are more prevalent near the shoreline areas, and the buoys were more prone to propeller cutoffs in the more traveled areas. The deeper the better was my general rule of thumb. However, the problem then arose how to fish among the heavies i.e. full timers with a 1000 or more pots. To put it mildly, they are very aware of your gear and extremely territorial. I always kept a healthy distance away (150 - 200 ft.) on the inside perimeter - one to two miles out from shore.
Bait didn't seem to matter much. I used bunker a lot, but racks from stripers, cod, fluke and even tuna heads worked well.
Good luck.
Capt. Jerry